The Last Stone
by Dante VII
Summary: One day, Makoto Seiko takes refuge from the rain in a Go salon. Before she can leave, she plays a game with none other than the Meijin using her old nickname Zhen Hui. At the end of the game, she flees before she can put down the last stone, the one that will secure her win. Just what is she so scared of? And what does Ya Shu, the Chinese Go prodigy, have to do with her?


**Summary**: One day, Makoto Seiko takes refuge from the rain in a Go salon. Before she can leave, she plays a game with none other than the Meijin using her old nickname Zhen Hui. At the end of the game, she flees before she can put down the last stone, the one that will secure her win. Just what is she so scared of? And what does Ya Shu, the Chinese Go prodigy, have to do with her?

**Warnings**: Original Characters, Pairings Currently Undecided, etc.  
*_Future warnings will be added as they come along_*

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Hikaru no Go.

**Last Updated**: Wednesday, August 15, 2012.

* * *

**RUNNING AWAY:**

_A genius Go player, Ya Shu's whereabouts are unknown. She has been missing for several days now, and her parents are frantic to find her, along with the Chinese Go Association. Police have no leads, but they have released a statement that says the young girl was being threatened by several other players before she ran away. There is a reward for any information_ ...

* * *

**Prologue**

A young girl stared at her reflection in the airport's bathroom mirror.

She looked a lot younger than her eleven years. Recently dyed hair, now an unnatural jet black, was tied back in a high ponytail. It made her face appear sharp and pointed with her high cheekbones, thin red lips, and angular features. Her eyes were now black as well thanks to the coloured contact lenses she had put in. The changes made a sharp contrast against her pale white skin from rarely going outside since she was born. Combined with her unnaturally skinny frame and small stature, she looked like she could easily collapse at any moment.

She wore faded blue jeans that had seen too many days and were frayed around the hems, black leather boots that had several scuff marks on them, and a baggy red long-sleeved shirt that was several sizes too big for her. A neutral gray backpack was slung over her right shoulder, resting naturally between her shoulder blades. A phone could be seen in her back pocket along with an iPod, and a pair of headphones were hung carelessly around her neck.

The girl knew she shouldn't be running away from her problems. Her therapist back at her home ... ex-home now, actually ... had told her that she had to confront them if she wanted to move forward. But she was tired - no, exhausted - of confronting problem after problem and seeing no end to them. She just wanted to start over somewhere new, where no one new her, where she could make a new reputation, where she wouldn't have the same expectations as she did before. She wanted to be nothing but an eleven-year-old girl about to enter junior high that didn't have to worry about anything beyond getting a boyfriend in the future and what she was going to eat for dinner. Was that really so much to ask?

She was being selfish. She knew she was. But was that really such a bad thing? Did that make her a bad person? She'd never had time to be selfish before. Now she had all the time in the world to do whatever she - she, not her parents - wanted. She had her freedom. Her past was a small sacrifice to pay. Surely she deserved this chance after everything she had done, right?

So she was running away. She had promised herself that she was going to become someone else so that she would never have to remember ... well, she didn't want to remember it at all. She'd rather forget everything. Screw confronting her problems, she was tired of it and wanted out.

The girl shook her head. She'd made her decision. There was no point in second-guessing herself now. There was no backing out now. She had no money left to go anywhere else, and she had already called people who had agreed to pick her up.

She took a deep breath. '_You've come so far, so why the hell are you feeling so nervous now_?' she tried to convince herself.

Would the people picking her up be ashamed of her decisions? She didn't think she could take that. It had been bad enough before ...

She glared at her reflection in that dingy airport bathroom.

'_This is my chance to be someone else. I can't blow it. I've got nowhere to go after this_.'

Grim with determination, the girl turned away from her reflection, straightened her shoulders, and marched out of the bathroom.

There was nowhere else she could go. The reminder of that was more than enough to get her going once again.

**~.~.~.~.~.~.~.**

"Are you sure this is what you want?"

The girl nodded. She was seated in the back of a car, an aged man and woman in the front. She had never looked at them after she had contacted them at the terminal, staring blankly out the window at the passing landscape that was blurred by falling rain. "I'm certain."

"What will you do now?"

She shrugged, not really caring. "I'm not sure. What are normal children supposed to do at this age?" She wanted to be a normal child, even though she wasn't quite sure what being normal entailed.

The couple blinked. The girl was certainly not what they had expected. She didn't act like a child at all, despite her age. Then again, if she had, she wouldn't have found a way to contact them.

"I guess we can enroll you in school," the woman said hesitantly, as if she was speaking to a feral animal that was currently calm, but could attack at any moment.

The girl considered the offer. "Could I take online courses instead? I'm not sure I can interact with other children my age just yet."

"O-Of course."

"Thank you," she said, still not looking at them. "Is there anything else a normal child would do?"

"Um ... "

"You can tell me later," the girl said dismissively. "I'm sure you did not expect this to happen, and I apologize. However, I did not have anywhere else I could go considering the circumstances."

"N-No, it's q-quite alright ... "

"Oh, and please do not address me by my former name," she remembered. "I do not wish to be connected with my past in any way that isn't necessary. I want to start anew."

"W-What should we call you, t-then?"

The young girl blinked. She honestly hadn't expected to get so far, so she hadn't thought about it. Just what did she want to be called?

"Makoto Seiko," she finally decided. "Sincere truth. As a reminder that I cannot turn back. Ever."

And with that, the car was silent. The girl had no reason to continue talking, and the adults were too stunned to say anything to the strange girl.

**~.~.~.~.~.~.~.**

So this was her new home. The girl, newly named Makoto Seiko, glanced around at her surroundings disinterestedly. A roof, a place to go to the bathroom, a place to sleep ... It had everything she would need.

"Do you like your new room?" the woman asked hesitantly from the doorway of her new room.

Makoto blinked. "It is acceptable," she said blankly.

The woman's face fell, and she quickly walked away.

The girl blinked in confusion. Had she said something offending? It seemed that she needed to work on her social interaction skills more than she thought, if she was already unintentionally making people wish to leave her company.

Oh well. At least she now had something to do.

**~.~.~.~.~.~.~.**

Were normal children usually this bored with life? Or was there some secret to normality that she had not yet discovered? Makoto wasn't sure what to think. She was too confused.

The people she was living with had asked her to call them 'grandmother' and 'grandfather' instead of by their names. Why? Were their names not acceptable for some reason?

The children her age were slow, and not very smart at all in her opinion. It was hard to ... connect ... with them since she had to constantly explain what she was saying when she was with them. They either couldn't understand her or didn't care what she had to say and wished to play sports instead. Makoto didn't understand why they would wish to play such pointless games that caused them injury. Were children being taught to be masochists, then? Should she become one as well? She didn't understand the point to that.

Adults were not easy to be around. They treated her like she was stupid, constantly telling her that she wouldn't understand what she was talking about when she obviously did, and when she told them that, they either didn't believe her or pretended not to hear her. And when she proved that she did, they either called her a genius or stared at her.

Being called a genius scared her. She didn't want to be a genius. It reminded her of why she left in the first place. Being stared at made her uncomfortable as well. She didn't like the feelings that those looks gave her. It made her feel dirty for some reason, and she hated it.

So now, Makoto stayed holed up in her room, only leaving to eat or use the bathroom, trying to learn how to be normal from the books she ordered online or from the Internet and counting the ceiling tiles on the roof, drifting in and out of sleep at random times.

Being normal was hard. And it was boring.

Makoto knew she was missing something, some secret to normality. But just what was it?

**~.~.~.~.~.~.~.**

Makoto's 'grandmother' and 'grandfather' were concerned about her. Now, they made daily attempts to have conversation with her and tried to make her get out of the house whenever they could. They had even invaded her room.

Did all 'grandparents' do such things? The girl didn't see the point. She was still alive and well. She was still reasonably healthy. She still got good grades when she signed in to her online classes.

So just why did she feel like she had disappointed them in some way?

**~.~.~.~.~.~.~.**

Day in, day out. The same boring routine. Wake up. Check the time. Eat. Read. Go to the bathroom. Continue to read. Have a forced conversation. Wonder what she was doing. Wonder what everyone else was thinking. Try to become normal. Wonder what she was missing. Go to the bathroom. Read some more. Be forced out of the house. Wander for a few minutes. Return. Eat. Read. Go to the bathroom again. Sleep. Wake up. Repeat.

**~.~.~.~.~.~.~.**

Maybe the therapist had been right. Maybe running away really wasn't the way to solve her problems.

Oh well. Too late now.

Makoto sighed as she was forced outside by her 'grandmother' once again. She winced at a sudden sharp breeze that made her wish she had a coat of some sort. It was cold.

Wandering around like a ghost, she knew her new neighborhood better than her old one even though she had lived there for eleven years.

Oh. It was raining. Sighing, she made her way into the nearest shop. She was somewhere in town, quite a ways away from her home. Shivering, she rubbed her bare arms in a pathetic attempt to get warm.

Makoto looked around. Just where -

'_Oh shit_.'

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**AUTHOR'S NOTE**:

This a re-writtten and revised version of my first story called _Placing the Last Stone_, which will soon be deleted. Thank you to everyone who read it.


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